Dump fatigue and get your energy back | Hans Buster | TEDxZemun

have you ever felt like it was all too much but you didn't have the energy anymore to keep going but at the same time you knew that quitting was not an option I for sure I felt that way and I bet many of you understand what I'm talking about but I also believe that you know what it feels like to be full of energy to know that you can conquer the world that you can achieve anything I know but for the biggest part of my life I didn't have the energy to do what I wanted to do I learned to live with my boundaries but I was definitely not happy with it I felt that I wasn't achieving anything but I was worthless and I kept on thinking the way I feel makes me not do things and by not doing them I feel worthless and it was this kind of feelings that I started referring to as emotions emotions that became energy and I believe that we need both sides of emotions we need to be happy we need to be sad but they have to be in a balance and I started seeing this balance as a system an energy system and I don't have my clicker so no presentation sorry for that but I will explain what this energy system looks like it's a barrel with hoses going in and coming out and the energy flowing through but if your energy system is broken then the energy stops flowing and the barrel starts leaking and today I want to take you on a journey and share with you how my barrel got broken and how I fixed it and that journey starts when I was 14 years old and it was almost in the past years we'd lost 5 relatives so we knew what it was like to have a bad news conversation and when my parents called my brother my sister and me to a family meeting we knew something was wrong and it all became clear very soon when my father started telling us guys I have bad news from the hospital I have lung cancer and the doctors told me that I don't have a lot of chances and that the odds are against me but I replied that I'm not going to die I replied that I'm going to fight and I'm going to win because we will fight like a family I was surprised by the way I responded because I started laughing like crazy and then I froze into silence but it did sound good we would fight and we would win so my dad's words were put into action and he went into surgery right after Christmas and again right after New Year to make sure that he was completely free of cancer but the real fight started when he came back home to recover and during dinner one night he told us he had set a new goal he wanted to walk to my sister school pick her up and bring her back home and that day he walked out of the door onto the pavement and he counted the tiles and he counted 10 one more than the day before and he was proud and so were we but all this fighting had a side effect because my dad started fighting everything and everybody and I was a teenager so I fought back I used my logic I communicated to the best way I could I got really angry at him I did everything I could but the result seemed to always be the same he was right and I was wrong and in his fights he would tell me Hans if you continue growing up like this nobody will ever love you you will have no friends left and you'll never find a partner so you can imagine that my intership system was pretty broken and leaking energy in order to protect myself I went into flight mode I wanted to disappear I first started having suicidal thoughts but I've always loved life family and friends way too much so that was not a serious option and I loved reading books fantasy history sci-fi anything that would me take me away from this reality I was living in at that moment because that reality was way too painful and I remember being at my best friend's birthday party and completely switching off and my friend came to me and he said Hans what's wrong how can I help you and I really wanted him to help me I wanted to shout out for help but I couldn't so I went back home and I decided I wasn't going to let my emotions control me I was going to control my emotions and in order to do that I started hurting myself so I could endure the pain a few years laters as soon as I could I left the house and went to study in another city but that was not far enough so I left with my girlfriend to another country we moved to Greece and I thought that I created a new start but I forgot that you cannot run away from your problems so they just came with me to Greece and even though I did everything according to the book I learned the language I got married I have two wonderful boys and I built my own business I still felt like a complete failure I didn't solve my problems and I didn't regain my energy my energy levels were at an all-time low I was depressed now sitting on the floor in my room I was curled up crying like a baby for what seemed like an eternity and it was the middle of the day but there was this heavy darkness around me soon enough I got my wake-up call because it was a weekday 3 o'clock in the afternoon and I was so exhausted that I went home from work because I wanted to sleep and as I went home and I opened the door my five-year-old son son is standing right in front of me and he's dad you're home early let's play and all I could say was I'm sorry boy I'm exhausted I'm going to sleep and I'm so I was lying down on my bed all I could think about is how I had sworn that I was going to be a great father with lots of energy for my kids and I was not so I was thinking the rest of the week what to do how did I get into this mess and how did I get out of it and I started realizing that I was fighting against everything and everybody and that I should stop doing that I should start fighting for myself caring for myself so I could care for the people around me because if I was fighting to beat someone else my energy was going there and my energy system was getting damaged well if I would fight for myself to improve my life to improve the life of others I would create a great energy system so I decided I would do things differently and I moved again but knowing that this time things would be different I came to Serbia and when I came here I started working with young people giving workshops and they were full of energy to learn and to gain opportunities and as I was listening to their stories and how they grew up and what their dreams were I got really humbled and inspired I wanted to help them not by helping them go abroad like all of them wanted but by showing them the opportunities around them so they didn't have to run away or fight like I did so I continued giving workshops to hundreds of people and they kept on humbling and inspiring me they inspired me to actually create a second story of my life a different story one with the great moments the learning moments the ones that helped me grow and create a great energy system and that story started around the same time as when the first story started it was 88 and the Netherlands had just won the european championship of football and i was sure I was going to be the new hoot her--let I would play for us a melon win championships and if you would see the photo of me dressed up like him you would see that I would also have a lot more hair I was full of self-confidence so when I went to stay with my cousin for a while and I played with his team I was swallowing through the players and scoring goals and I knew it it was not just my dream it was my destiny to become a great player so here or so later with my team we got the opportunity to prove ourselves we were playing Feyenoord which is one of the big teams in my country and I knew it I was going to shine but the whole game all we could do was defend and kick the ball away because they were way too good for us so of course we lost the game and I lost my passion because I lost my dream I stopped playing football but my dad called me and told me Hunt's just keep practicing because if you get better at football you'll enjoy it more and he said that's what life is all about hums you get better at something and you enjoy it more so don't you quit on me go play football and make sure you enjoy it and so I did and I really enjoyed playing football and I still do and that was the moment when I realized that measuring success is not about competition it's not about winning or losing it's about improvement about getting better at things and enjoying them and that was the first lesson that helped me build a great energy system but I had a problem now because I was not going to make a difference as a football player so I needed to find something else to do with my life but I was lucky my mom was a remedial teacher she was helping kids in primary school catch up with the rest of the class whenever they needed that and she was very very passionate about her work and I believe that her passion came from the way that she saw those children because she didn't see them for their limitations but she saw them for what they were capable of and as she was bringing out the best in them she motivated them to grow and develop so and when it was my turn to figure out what I was going to study and what I was going to do with the rest of my life my mom sat down with me and she told me the following if you want to be happy hums make sure that you choose something that you love doing and you're really good at because if you do what you love you'll get better at it and if you're good at something you'll love doing it those things go together so please son choose whatever you like do what makes you happy but know one thing if you do something with communication whatever it is but communication you will be able to make a difference and if you make a difference you'll be full of energy to do it again and again and again I'll be forever grateful for that conversation with my mom it made me realize I had to focus on my talents and on the talents of the people I meet and that has been very very useful in my personal and professional life very much so when ten years ago my business partner and I started to work together for three reasons the first two reasons trusting each other and having the same business values creating a great foundation the third one allowed us to build a castle on that we recognized and appreciated each other's talents now in our business I do the talking and he does the execution or as he likes to say I sell a problem and he solves it and it's been great because whenever I was in trouble and I found something difficult to do I knew he had the soul but there was a fourth reason that made us survive the Greek economic crisis and my personal crisis of my divorce we set our egos aside because if you want to synergize and synergy is a greek word originally and it means work together you need to really understand each other you need to know what the strengths and weaknesses are what the needs are of the people you're working with and if you want to really understand you have to listen without your ego and that's a really difficult thing to do I believe that I'm a good listener until I catch myself actually listening to the voice in my head ready to give answers rather than to the person that is talking to me and it's like a slap in the face waking me up to the present and to the things that a person is telling me and nine out of ten times that's all someone needs in order to get their energy flowing there is another side to our ego which is about the moment when we need to talk because we need help because we need to share something and if our ego is too big it will get in the way of us talking and asking for help and that's been immensely difficult for me until the moment when I was completely finished when my divorce and the Greek economic crisis forced me to start from zero and accept the help from my friend Walter when I packed my suitcases and was ready to move to Belgrade and as I was ready to move I completely trusted him when he promised to me that he would make sure I would get from Belgrade to Greece and back to see my children just like he did every two weeks for two years Thank You Walter that made me realize how important synergy really is and what it really means because synergy is not just working together it means helping each other so to conclude I hope you understand why I'm full of energy today and why I feel I have a great energy system and I challenge all of you to create a story for your life to create an energy system for yourselves in which you do what you're good at and you love doing it so that you keep on practicing and improving yourself and you make a difference by synergizing and helping each other thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 127,632

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Serbia, Life, Motivation, Personal growth

Id: syrWtjTpT0M

Length: 18min 17sec (1097 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 22 2016